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In the mid 80s the economy was so bad in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction and Real Estate worlds that we started to give slogans for each year to provide a little...
Reshaping the Construction Industry
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How do we overcome the stereotypes that many younger students have about the construction industry? There is definitely an image issue that the construction industry is...
March 18, 2011
Today is St. Patrick’s Day and spring starts officially next week. Both of those dates are signaling the start of the construction season for 2011. Sure, there is snow on the ground in parts of the country, but already daylight savings has started in a number of states and the temperatures in the south are in the 70s and 80s.What are some of the other signs that spring is here? Besides the big blue jay sitting outside the window and the robins in the yard, several economists in the industry have recently stated that we are in a Design Recovery period in that the design firm indexes are indicating that their business is improving, certainly not to the levels of 2006-07, but improving nonetheless.
March 17, 2011
We got this one from one of the friends of Construction Citizen, John Hinson in Dallas.Pennsylvania enacted a misclassification law last month and within a week, officials had...
March 16, 2011
Stephen E. Sandherr, CEO of the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) was in Phoenix today to release a plan to increase the demand for construction and in so doing, grow the national economy. The plan is titled Building a Stronger Future, A New Blueprint for Economic Growth. According to AGC’s press release, the plan “outlines measures to help boost private sector demand for construction, help tackle a growing infrastructure maintenance backlog and reduce needless red tape and regulations. ... The association developed the plan to overcome the years-long construction downturn that has left over 2.2 million construction workers unemployed and the industry’s unemployment rate at 21.8 percent, more than twice the national average.”
March 15, 2011
Jim Stevenson, CEO of Bellows Construction, talked recently about his view on the Ethics Matrix, which is a way to explain what we consider to be right versus wrong as a society and as individuals. Jim introduced the topic by stating that although many people might think that the laws a society makes are the highest form of law, in fact these are actually the lowest. These laws which communities enact are called Human Positive Laws, and reflect what the community and society regard as important and “moral” at one particular point in time. Above these laws are Ethics, which include standards which groups such as doctors or lawyers hold themselves to across regions and throughout history.
March 10, 2011
According to ENR (Engineering News-Record - subscription required), a new 3D Model Viewer is rocking the BIM world.Tekla has released BIMSight, a free 3D viewer for BIM modeling...
March 09, 2011
Judy Schreiner at Engineering News Record (ENR) has, in her latest column in the February 28 issue, talked with author Chuck Underwood about ways that we will have to work with the Millennials who are showing up at your offices looking for work on your construction sites. Underwood is the author of The Generational Imperative and the founder and principal of The Generational Imperative, Inc. According to Underwood, the Millennials are people who were born from 1982 through the present. His comments were focused on the First Wavers who are 18 to 29 years old this year. According to the statistics there are 40 to 50 million of them and they are likely already working for some of us.I was interested in the article as it compares the various generational similarities and differences between Gen Xers and the Millennials.Most interesting to me is Underwood’s comment:
March 07, 2011
One indicator of where we are in the economic recovery is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure of the output of goods and services produced by labor and property as reported by the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. Their most recent analysis of the final quarter of 2010 gives a bit of good news. Yesterday Bloomberg reported that commercial construction contributed to the gross domestic product in the last quarter of 2010, after delivering a deficit to the number during every quarter since the middle of 2008. Even more promising, the article points to the close relationship between commercial construction spending and another market indicator, the Federal Reserve’s Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization index, which measures what US factories, mines and utilities produce. Bloomberg’s chart shows that commercial construction generally follows the same pattern as industrial production, only about a year afterwards.
March 03, 2011
Over 90 business leaders from over 65 companies as varied as McGraw-Hill, Campbell Soup, Duke Energy, Credit Suisse, Bloomberg, Quest Diagnostics, Hasbro and the National Basketball Association attended an event this Monday which focused on the economic benefits of “doing the right thing” by seeking solutions to community and global concerns. The Board of Boards CEO Conference was hosted by the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP), which is an international forum of businessmen dedicated to helping members improve corporate philanthropy. They teach that initiatives which benefit the global community such as
March 02, 2011
